1831.

PECULIAR POPULATION OP SOUTHERN ILLINOIS.

989

and the district then in ashes, which comprised a great portion of "the old city," is now the handsomest and busiest part of that city of workshops.

" Iii early days, the southern settlements of Illinois presented hut 1846.] few specimens of the more refined, enterprising, intellectual and moral people, and society generally there was of a very low class.

" As early as 1816-17, several counties of this section of the territory were overrun with horse-thieves and counterfeiters, who were so numerous and so well banded together as to set the laws at defiance. Many of the sheriffs, justices of the peace, and constables were of their number, aud even some of the judges of the count}' courts; and they had numerous friends to aid and sympathize with them, even among those who were the least suspected. When any of them were arrested, they either escaped from the slight jails of those times, or procured some of their gang to be on the jury; and they never lacked witnesses to prove themselves innocent.

" The people, iu many instances, in self-defense, formed themselves into revolutionary tribunals, under the name of ' Regulators;' and the governor and judges of the territory, seeing the impossibility of executing the laws in the ordinary way, against an organized body of banditti, who set all laws at defiance, winked at and encouraged the proceedings of this citizen organization.

" The regulators iu number generally constituted about a captain's company, to which they gave a military organization, by the election of officers. The company generally operated at night When assembled for duty, they marched, armed and equipped as if for war, to the residence or lurking-place of a rogue, arrested, tried, and punished him by severe whipping and banishment. In this mode most of the rogues were expelled from the country; and it was the opiuion of the best men at the time, that in the then divided and distracted state of society, and the imperfect civilization, such proceedings were not only justifiable, but absolutely necessary for the enforcement of justice.

" There yet remained, however, for many years afterward, a noted gang of rogues in Pope aud Massac, and other counties bordering' on the Ohio river. This gang built a fort in Pope county, and set the government at open defiance. In the year 1831, the honest portion of the people in that region assembled under arms, in great numbers, and attacked the fort with small arms and one